Ofm wrote: ↑Fri May 27, 2022 12:49 pm
On 27-05-2022 Received a phone call from Home Office and was told that they won’t be able to issue me Settled Status now only because my present residence card would be expiring early July. Then only I would be granted settled status.
It’s when I’ve been with my partner more than 10 years and we’ve been living together since then. We are even married almost 5 years and I was issued residence card on basis of durable partner.
The 5 years clock start on the date that the family relationship began. For parent-offspring relationship, that's birth date (proven by birth certificate). For married couples, that's the marriage date (proven by marriage certificate).
For durable partners... well, dating or cohabiting isn't really a family relationship until it has been certified by a government official, so the only date agreed to be official is the date of issue of first EEA document, which in this case is the Residence Card. Time before that, even in a genuine relationship, does not count towards the 5 years, because it simply isn't a relationship legally proven.
Note that even if your relationship qualified as durable partner on the date you applied for your Residence Card, at that point no government official had gone through your application to confirm it represented a valid case. Therefore, your valid relationships starts not on the date of application for Residence Card, but on the date of issue of the card. You could think of the EEA Residence Card as a process of getting married that took the few months it took them to issue the card. Such is life.
And, yes, you are supposed to apply when you are eligible, not before.
My posts express what I believe are the facts, based on the best of my knowledge, about the topics discussed in this forum. They do not constitute immigration advice.
